Ed Boon On His AIAS Hall Of Fame Induction And Career In Video Games And Pinball

Ed Boon is best known for his work on the Mortal Kombat series, which he’s had a hand in guiding since 1992, first at Midway Games and now with his team at NetherRealm Studios. He’s one of the most celebrated creators in gaming, and today he’ll be honored with an induction into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences’ Hall of Fame.

Boon joins the likes of other video game legends like Shigeru Miyamoto, Mark Cerny, Bonnie Ross, Gabe Newell, and last year’s recipient, Connie Booth. The award will also be presented by Todd Howard, a fellow Hall of Famer. The awards show will begin at 7 PM CT and air on IGN as well as various streaming channels.

I had the chance to talk to the fighting game legend for an hour a couple of weeks ago, a few days after he first learned he was being inducted into the Hall of Fame. His thoughts were still fresh and he was taking in his experiences, as well as reflecting back on his long career.

Tell me how and when you first learned about the Hall of Fame induction. I’m guessing that was an unusual moment.
Meggan sent an email to me [Scavio] from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. It took me three readings to get it registered. It kept going for days. With each day that passes, I’m appreciating it even more than the day before. It’s really a great honor.

Your passion for sports is evident. You started your career in video games by making High Impact Football. You are considered a professional in sports if you make it to the Hall of Fame. That isn’t the case with this award, but I’m guessing it’s still a bit of a tough pill to swallow since it represents such a vast amount of time doing the same thing.
I’m glad it wasn’t a lifetime achievement award. [laughs] Still, it’s been 30 years. I find all of these stats start to come into my head when I reflect on that. The first Mortal Kombat was when I was 20. Mortal Kombat gave me more years than I had without it. In terms of my decades – my 20s, 30s, and 40s – it’s consumed most of them. I’ve been fortunate enough to go through pinball games, arcade games, the home video game business, and now with online, it’s kind of becoming its own genre of games.

I’ve been having a lot of nostalgic and retrospective thoughts about all the groups of people I’ve worked with. The people with whom I have worked in different chapters of my life are what I consider to be the highlights of my own personal history. The Midway days were a major chapter in my life. The world was just beginning to explode with Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam. It was a great experience to be in the middle all those games, consoles and arcades. I also saw the growth of the videogame industry. For me, it’s just been a huge journey down memory lane and a nostalgic trip.

The Midway Days were brought up by you. Did you ever find a moment from that time that is always recalled when you were looking back into the past.
I don’t think there is one. There are many big chapters. There were a few great years at Midway, when everything was on fire. The last twelve years with Warner Bros. are a high. You don’t know you are in it while you are in it. A few years have to pass and then you can kinda look back and go, “That was really great.” When we released that first Mortal Kombat game in 2011 with Warner Bros., it was a stressful time for me. But looking back, it was a great time, too – especially going into the Injustice games and alternating between those with Mortal Kombat.

Eugene Jarvis was my boss, and Larry DeMar was mine. Working with them and looking back now – how they instilled their work ethic and way to approach things – that really stuck with me. Again, I’m further acknowledging these things as I look back.

Let me go back to when you first decided to play games. Was there any other option for a career? Which directions were you leaning in if this Midway job didn’t work?
The career in video gaming was never one I considered. At 21 years of age, I only had one job resume. There was a little Asterix at the bottom that said “interest in video games.” It was more of a personal thing. It was discovered by a head hunter who sent it to Williams Electronics. They called me to interview. It was pinball, and I thought it was for video games. I distinctly remember saying, “People program pinball machines?” I think part of me was still thinking they were those electromechanical things, even though I had seen the more recent games. They said, “Oh, yeah,” and showed me the new games. The job was exciting for me. They were also in the beginning stages of developing a videogame system. This was the time they began working on Narc.

My friends were the pinball players downstairs. I was able to work three years in this field for them. It was a wonderful experience that I enjoyed. But I continued to see Eugene and his team on Narc, and it became my favorite activity. That department eventually recruited me and I began working with High Impact Football.

I heard you lent your voice to a pinball machine.
I’m a voice in about 20 pinball machines [laughs].

Please give me the one people will recognize.
It was FunHouse. The movie featured a talking puppet. A movie was made called Magic It contained an evil puppet. This puppet caused its owner to do horrible things. FunHouse has a lot of similarities to that. There’s this puppet who is taunting the player. I’m the voice of that puppet.

Discuss the switch from pinball and video games with me.
My programming skills were probably honed in pinball. I think I had a better understanding of it – a prerequisite into the video game department. Although I enjoyed pinball, I knew that I wanted to be a video gamer. Eugene, and the other guys making the game downstairs became my friends. They were always there, I would go down to check on them, ask me questions and videotape people that were being digitalized. It was incredible. The whole thing was very exciting. As I became more excited about the pinball games, it was natural that my final game was not in my programming queue. I also had a video arcade at my desk that I programmed in my spare time.

I remember they gave me this packet of dollar bill images that would drop in Narc and I was making explosions of them on screen. Making things move is addictive. There’s nothing you can think of that you can’t do. It’s like a painter’s canvas. You have endless options.

Your feelings of nostalgia are evident. Do you have any thoughts about making a pinball game again?
There are people I know who still programme pinball machines. Programming stopped for me at least fifteen to twenty years ago. There’s no way I would be able to keep up with them. For a better idea about the time, all of my Assembly games were done. The one I’m hoping will happen someday – and it’s come close a few times – is a Mortal Kombat pinball machine. It would be amazing. It would be great to have one in my basement.

Ed Fries, you know. [former vice president of game publishing at Microsoft]He made Halo on Atari 2600. It was done the traditional way. The same could be done for Mortal Kombat pinball machines! Matt Booty was the one I was speaking to. [head of Microsoft Studios] the other day and he was telling me about this group that is still making Atari 2600 games. He told me everything about them, and provided links. It’s great to create video games, but when there was only two to three people involved, it took as little as 2 hours to get from idea to screen. Now it’s months. It was hands-on training and the close knit team that made it so special.

You’ve talked about the birth of Mortal Kombat ad nauseam. Do you see anything new? Or is the story unchanged as it was before?
One of the things I remember most about a lot these games was a lot laughing. You get a tight-knit group of developers and it’s so much more than making a game. It’s great to spend time with you and be close friends. It was exhausting work. Positive memories are what I have and lots of laughter is all that remain.

Recently, we saw an video of you coming up with Scorpion’s famous “Get over here!” line. That was a suggestion on the spot, and it’s become one of the most iconic things in all of gaming. I’d love to hear how you created this game with such a small number of developers.
We had an amazing collaboration relationship [Mortal Kombat co-creator]John Tobias during the Mortal Kombat 1 game. John and I were in our first leadership role. It was ultimately what we both wanted. The two of us were able implement nearly every idea. We would both make graphics, and I would add them to the game. Our workflow was spontaneous.

You have an idea, it comes to you, so you speak it loudly, go through it and then put it in the game. We had our shot list for the motion capture shoot. But, it was just one of those situations where an idea pops into your mind while you wait. Then I started to speak loudly. I was like, “Yeah, we can do this,” and, “Yeah, we can do that,” and it turned into maybe the most iconic move in all of the Mortal Kombat games. It’s that spear and hearing that “Get over here!” And it’s weird hearing my voice say that line. It’s that level of spontaneity and it was a great creative environment.

Before Nolan North existed, you were Nolan North. Your voice was all around!
There are some pinball games and other video games like some of Mark Turmell and Tobias’ other games where I did audio work. Back then, it was not possible to hire a professional voice artist. Since I had done it for a few things, some of the pinball teams would say, “Hey, Ed, can you come to the studio real quick to do this announcer or character.” I always said, “Sure, I got a couple of hours to kill.” My voice is in a whole bunch of games. It’s weird.

While you still like the idea of working as a small group, you now work with hundreds. Is the creative medium changing for you?
I’m having conversations with experts in their fields and trying to put together a huge picture. It’s as fun [as the old days]When you’re done with the game. I’ll go into somebody’s office who is working on something really cool and I’ll have that moment where I go, “That’s right, it was really cool when I could spend my whole day making this one move feel perfect.” There’s something fun to that. It makes me nostalgic. When the game is done, and everyone is having a great time with it, that’s when I get a moment to appreciate all the time that we put into it. It’s a moment of satisfaction that you get from it, especially when the game is received well. There are so many fires and spinning plates on these big projects that it’s overwhelming at times, and you need to trust the experts that they are going to do their thing.

Your typical day at NeatherRealm is it? Is your creative work still ongoing?
I’m much more involved in the early part of development, when we are figuring out what we are going to do. For each game, I go into it thinking: “What’s going to be new about it that will get people excited?” Defining it, helping with direction. We all know the end result. We already know that it will contain 20 environments and have 30 characters. It is known that all of its major parts are well-known. And then it’s kind of reduction time. At that point, I’m more checking in on the various aspects of the game and making suggestions and stuff. I might also be thinking about the next game. I’m trying to stay ahead of it, but the bulk of the work is done by the crazy talented designers, programmers, artists, and the list goes on and on.

Is there a game you think is the best of your entire career?
The Grid was an arcade game that we created. The Grid was a game that involved six players and six cabinets. It featured everyone competing in an arena similar to Doom or Quake. In some ways, it was the most fun I’ve had working on a game. This was after playing a few Mortal Kombat games. It’s a huge change to the style of the game. This allowed me to discover new areas of gaming.

We knew there was something. Mortal Kombat 2 is probably the best of all Mortal Kombat games. There was a lot of confidence, like, “Yes, this will be better than the last one.” After that, the movie came out, there were TV shows and all of that, and there was this machine of Mortal Kombat stuff going on. Much of our efforts were focused on getting the next game released.

The great Injustice is another. I read DC Comics my entire life, and to carve out our own multiverse slice with a bad Superman and Batman, and then see it become a comic book, mobile game, and animated movie was really cool. This was quite the rush.

How much involvement do you have in the multimedia content like the comic book series?
In varying degrees. A year and a half ago was the first Mortal Kombat animation series. [the animation studio]It was incredible. The script was sent to us, we gave feedback and were shown animations. I had a comment where I thought Goro’s head was too small, and they went back and made it a little bigger. It was a great project. But there’s a range to our involvement. I certainly can’t have my fingerprints in every single thing that is released with the name “Mortal Kombat” or “Injustice” on it.

Have you been offered a role in the Mortal Kombat movie?
No, but I hope someone who reads your article will say, “That’s a great idea!”

I’ll tell you this, chief creative officer Donald Mustard over at Epic Games is in a bunch of movies. I don’t know how he’s doing it, but he’s in an Avengers movie, Resurrections by The MatrixAnd even more Star Wars: The Rise of SkywalkerStormtrooper. There’s even a scene of Fortnite being played in an Avengers film. Talk to him about the best way to get into films.
Wow! It’s amazing.

It’s my desire to return to Mortal Kombat. You felt bullish coming off Mortal Kombat, and I’d love to hear where you were and what you did when you released Mortal Kombat 2. You must have had people going crazy for it.
This is a story I tell. It was only 20 minutes away from my office that we were playing Mortal Kombat 2 in an arcade. The cabinet was in the room, with Mortal Kombat 2 displayed on its marquee. However, it didn’t have a CPU inside. It could be turned on to turn the lights on but it would not do anything else. It was Friday night, and we were all pretty sure it had been figured out by the time we arrived to insert the CPU. It was immediately surrounded by a large crowd.

It was a single-player match that I was seeing. Kung Lao’s move is to teleport and come up from the other side. Each time it was done by the CPU,The game crashed. Each time. This is Friday night and it’s 7 p.m. Everyone wants to play it. I go, “Oh my god, a person can teleport and it won’t crash, but if the AI does it, it will every time.” I’m sweating bullets and thinking, “I have to go back to work, find the bug, fix it, burn a new set of ROMs, drive back to the arcade, and put it in.” It’ll be midnight by the time I get back. With the huge crowd there I thought I would wait a bit until it settles down since everyone would be playing against each other and the game wouldn’t crash. The arcade was open until 2 AM when it closed. It didn’t have one game played with one person against the computer. There were always two people. I just kept waiting and waiting, but I didn’t have to fix it. It was fixed when I got back from the arcade.

It was so big. There was an arcade near Chicago that had a lot of players. We knew the game looked better, played better, and had more characters and way more secrets – it checked off every box. It was exciting, but I wasn’t able to stop sweating over the bug.

You still enjoy video gaming and will continue to do so for many more years. Your future holds many possibilities. Do you know what your future holds?
[long pause]Each day brings new challenges when creating something so large like these games. “You can’t do this, the tech team is concerned about this, the designers want to do this, audio is adding this new feature” – it’s this constant cloud of problem-solving that has to be done. When you are in the middle of it, it can be stressful and taxing on you, but when you are done, and the product is received well, you tend to forget those days – the hard stuff. It energizes and reenergizes you to tackle the next challenge. Sometimes it is very difficult to stay focused when you are right in the middle. This hall of fame thing on a larger scale has forced me to look at things from a different perspective. Over the years there has been a lot pressure, stress, and lots of energy put into these games. It is worth the effort to receive an award such as this.

NetherRealm: What’s next?
For 10 years we had been releasing Mortal Kombat/Injustice. It was widely speculated that we were going to break this pattern. I can tell you there was a reason for it, and when we announce our next game, it’ll make a lot more sense. At this point, I’ll get in a lot of trouble if I say anything more.